Must See TV: The 8 Strongest Primetime Sitcom Lineups Over The Past 30 Years

Remember the glory days of last week, when we had Parks and Recreation to look forward to on Thursday nights? Yeah, that was fun, though not as fun as last year, when 30 Rock, Community, and Parks and Recreation single-handedly elevated NBC from “that network with The Voice and a whole bunch of garbage” to “that network with The Voice and a whole bunch of garbage, and some excellent Thursday night shows.”

(I’ll leave it to you to decide where season nine of The Office falls into that equation.)

But now, Parks is gone, at least for the time being, and with the possible exception of Parenthood, there’s almost no reason to watch NBC anymore. That’s a far cry from the near-past, when it was THE place for TV comedy, and not the unintentional comedy of Dr. FaceHands. So many of the best primetime sitcom lineups belong to NBC, which is why I looked back at every Big Four scheduling block over the past 30 years to find the 10 strongest, based equally on the show as a whole and said show’s quality in that particular season. Here they are, in chronological order.

The first of many NBC Thursday night entries, which makes The Voice -> Sean Saves the World -> The Michael J. Fox Show all the more depressing. Cheers and The Cosby Show are two of the greatest sitcoms of all-time, not to mention the shows that made NBC Thursday THE night for TV, while Night Court starred John Larroquette and was honored in an episode of 30 Rock, two very good things. Though not as good as that Bill Cosby GIF.

Seinfeld and Friends, that’s why this one’s here. So let’s talk about Madman of the People, one of my favorite Thursday night sitcoms that was mega-popular when it leeched off Seinfeld‘s ratings, but no one remembers anything about it anymore. Other classics: Union Square, Hope & Gloria, and of course, Boston Common (Thursday night: 8th highest rated show; Sunday night: 51st). At least that one gave a young Zach Galifianakis a gig.

Disregard Just Shoot Me, a finalist in the Worst Shows to Air for the Highest Number of Seasons contest (its bitter rival: According to Jim), and concentrate on the always-underrated NewsRadio. As for Fraiser and Mad About You, the former was far better than the latter, and they’re both funnier than their current “catch repeats on Hallmark Channel, tonight at 7 p.m.” tag might otherwise insist. But mostly: NewsRadio.

2002-2003, Fox Sundays

7 pm: Futurama
7:30 pm: King of the Hill (repeat)
8 pm: The Simpsons
8:30 pm: King of the Hill
9 pm: Malcolm in the Middle
9:30 pm: Andy Richter Controls the Universe

If only because it’s the only lineup with FIVE good-to-great shows, including the perpetual-inclusion-in-every-cancelled-too-soon list Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Futurama at its peak, and The Simpsons before the downward spiral became a flush. (If you’re wondering why a golden-era Simpsons lineup wasn’t picked, that’s because in 1993-1994, it was paired with In Living Color, which excellent, and The Sinbad Show and Herman’s Head, which no. A year later, it moved to its current Sunday home…with House of Buggin’.)

I tried to watch The Middle.. Got two episodes in before the whole “we’re funny cause we’re a family” joke made me want to kill myself. Oh you’re a busy mom? Always pushing the envelope aren’t you ABC?

1. Frankie is my mum (with like 40% less careful parenting)
2. Sue is my sister at that age.
3. Axl is me at his age (plus 100% more popularity at school)
4, Brick is me at HIS age (plus 5% more weirdness).

So yeah…the show works when EVERYONE in it can be related to a real person who exists in real life.

If you ever want to learn why NBC was so awesome in the mid 80s – early 90s, try and get your hands on a copy of Brandon Tartikoff’s out of print autobiography The Last Great Ride. I was studying broadcasting in college when I got my hands on a copy of it and I recommend it to everyone remotely interested in TV. That man started at the bottom and worked his way up to make NBC #1 with The Cosby Show, Cheers, and Seinfeld. Seriously, a great read.

The Middle is a solid show. I really like it and always look forward to the new seasons. Plus, I live in Indiana so it’s nice to see 2 shows I really dig based here.
Happy Endings being cancelled still hurts. Glad to see some of the cast finding work again but I’m still hoping for a reunion of the cast on New Girl at some point….

What, no TGIF on ABC? Full House, Family Matters, Dinosaurs, and Perfect Strangers weren’t all great shows, especially by today’s comedy standards, but they are classics. And they did exactly what they were supposed to do at the time, which was get 10-year-olds (like I was at the time) to have their butts planted in front of the TV for 2 hours.

Lets all take a second and remember that NBC PASSED on a show head by the extremely talented John Mulaney that eventually got picked up by Fox. I’m sure they’d love a mulligan on that one to put right after Parks & Rec

I like Fox Tuesdays now but prefered Last Years Tuesday Line Up: Raising Hope, Ben and Kate,New Girl, Mindy Project. God Damn the sitcom massacre of 2012, Ben and Kate could have been one of the greats.

For months I’ve been avoiding the ridiculous sign up process that this site requires (Really? Facebook AND you want me to create ANOTHER login?) But this article incensed me SO much.

First off, NBC comedies have been horrible for years. All you hipsters LOVE Tina Fey. She’s good in small doses. After that I can’t stand her. Community? Parks and Recreation? Crap as well. NBC hasn’t had a comedy for YEARS. Whitney had a chance. A good solid chance. First year it was great and then the network stepped in. You could completely tell. Totally watered it down and destroyed it. Everything on NBC is a Lorne Michaels owned property (comedy). And don’t get me started with him destroying SNL.

NBC sucks. We all know it. But then.. THEN you say Parenthood is the only thing watching on that crap network? PARENTHOOD? Love Lauren Graham. Tried everything to watch that show only because she’s on it. But what a piece of crap THAT is.

But here’s the real travesty. You think all of this (on NBC) is better than The Blacklist? Which may be the best new show of the season? Really?

Gonna be honest…my tastes tend to line up pretty well with the majority of this site. Loves and hates are mostly the same.

But I have been enjoying Blacklist. It’s not the smartest show but holy shit I can watch James Spader play a smug sociopath all day every day. The supporting cast is a little wooden, but no one is glaringly bad.

I too enjoy the Blacklist, especially since it doesn’t seem to intend on dragging plot points out. The thing with the husband would normally be an all season delay, but it looks like they’re addressing it next week

The Blacklist has potential, but the show is going to have to evolve beyond Spader being Spader while everyone else stands around staring at one another. And so help me god, if he ends up being her father…

I thought about that as well, but there is literally no way in hell they could spin him as being her father, at least not until we get a lot more background on what happened to Spaders family, and how he apparently knew the FBI agents father (as he said he did)

I just don’t see any good end to “I will only speak with this totally unrelated rookie who I have absolutely no connection with whatsoever, get it?”

If it ends up that he chose her because she was a pawn in something bigger, and he could give less of a shit about her, that’d be a serious development. Or if they just straight up addressed the dad issue and he laughed it off with an “of course not”. But it’s CBS, so yeah, he’s probably a father or an uncle, or her dad’s partner in crime who owes him a debt.

yeah, if he is the father (i’m afraid he is going to be) then Blacklist will end up on a pile with The Following of “shows I got really excited about from the previews and then made a fart noise while deleting them from my DVR for squandered potential”

Worth noting on the 2010-2011 NBC Thursday:
Season 2 of Community (amazing)
Season 5 of 30 Rock (very, very good)
Season 7 of the Office (Michael Scott leaves)
Season 3 of Parks and Rec (arguably the best season of a comedy in the last twenty years).

I also nominate 2009-2010 ABC Wednesday:
8:00: Scrubs
8:30: The Middle
9:00: Modern Family
9:30: Cougar Town

Don’t really get the love for The Middle. It’s one of the most poor – mediocre shows on television. You know it’s bad when they show it all the time in the UK. We don’t get Sunny, Parks and Rec, Community, Arrested Development etc but if we do it’s on at about 2am on a weird channel. The stuff we do get in droves is Two and a Half Men, Big Bang and The Middle.

Doesn’t help that the little kid in The Middle freaks me the fuck out. And the Janitor from Scrubs is not a leading man.

We need a list of the worst decisions made by networks regarding beloved shows (ex: cancelling Happy Endings, keeping Dexter alive for 5 seasons too many, October 19th, massive hiatuses and such, passing on John Mulaney), if not just to see how many NBC decisions would top the list

I like the Middle because I can relate more to the people with a broken dishwasher and difficulties holding jobs in a tough economy than Modern Family’s rich elitists with no real issues in finances and no remorse for how jerky they are to other people.

That show was pretty ok. I’d watch it but I wouldn’t go out of my way to do so. David Cross as Donnie was fucking brilliant. I don’t think a show could get away with someone pretending to be mentally handicapped to get out of working for a living.